The Shape Of Happiness Is the Stones Of Venice

I know a man who finds the shape of happiness in a warm baguette and a bottle of red Chilean wine. I am not that man. But I do believe happiness comes in many shapes; that happiness is different things on different days.Tonight, for me, happiness was picking up a complete set of the works of Ruskin at around 25¢ an inch. Happiness was finding myself, say nine o'clock in the evening, crouched on the floor of an abandoned friary in east Edmonton, running my fingers down the penny-coloured spines of World's Great Events, The Gospel of St. Mary, The Prisoner of Zenda, Sartre, Simone de Beauvior, C.S. Lewis, wonderful books, wonderful authors. Rooms and hallways and entrances, old planks and half-torn-down walls, the friary's hallways were wide and dark, opening into large chambers well-windowed with the summer evening and silent traffic. My brother picked up a beautifully bound set of Charles Reade, I found an excellent paperback of The Well Wrought Urn, and more, and more! All kinds of thanks to my girlfriend's friend's mom, who let us in the door.

But I promised puns in my last post, three hot-cross puns (truly, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to suffer, that's the first and last I'll do to you). Here they are, then, ranked in a strictly subjective order of worst first to best last, serious for-real puns, manly and upstanding (or womanly, too, whatev):

#1 Love Won Another
#2 No Fun Intended

I'll send a watercolour of John Ruskin to whoever can deduce the #3 pun listed on this post. See you later, Da Vinci Coders.

Reading: Moby-Dick + Herman Melville
Listening: "Can You Do That Dance?" + The Pink Mountaintops